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Post by Andrew on Apr 25, 2013 14:24:26 GMT -6
So, I recently finished watching an anime about an MMO and it got me thinking about past, current, and future MMOs that we've had the opportunity to experience ourselves and I was wondering about what other people thought about MMOs and the features and implementations put into the games that they decide to play.
Which brings me to this post..
If you take the time to respond, I would like to see what you look for in an MMO. What you don't look for. What puts you off, drags you in, intrigues you, blows you away, disgusts you, etc.
A list of pros and cons, I should say.
I would appreciate the input as I plan on using anything/everything gathered here in a project of sorts that I would like to start working on.
NOTE Do not use this thread to bash the MMO genre or particular MMOs. I know all of you hate WoW, but keep it civil. Use MMOs as examples of what was done right/wrong in your lists.
Again, I appreciate your input.
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KJ
Unfamiliar Face
Magister mundi sum
Posts: 38
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Post by KJ on Apr 26, 2013 11:05:19 GMT -6
OK so besides the internet itself totally being an mmo and what is normally thought of as mmo's are actually minigames...
Things to look for:
A coherent story and setting. It takes a lot of care and upkeep to make sure every little detail lines up properly with everything else, but boy does it pay off! It doesn't necessarily have to all be one overarching mega-story to make things cool, in fact that's a fast way to make it boring, but having the facts of the world being solid and non-contradictory really adds depth. It also helps if what's going on is readily apparent, with readily apparent reasons, and a fulfilling back-story that those who care can find.
Not a direct ripoff of something else. There are a lot of WoW clones out there, most of em -cough-[east asian]-cough cough- with a freemium style, but when something blatantly and badly does what something else is already doing just fine? That's a paddlin.' Like that TF2 clone that came out not too long ago.
Fun mechanics and spontaneous gameplay I find it intellectually fulfilling when I am able to optimize my character as well as most people who just grind for gear by simply fiddling with the way my stats are allocated or how I spec'd up my skills. There was a little known spec for Death Knights near the end of Wrath of the Lich King, you'd go down Unholy just until you got and upgraded the Ghoul, which would grant you enough points left over to get all the way to Threat of Thassarian (the one that let you do damage with your offhand on skill use). It was amazing at single-target dps, I was in ToC gear, easily surpassing my guild, and keeping up with the best rogues on the server. There a lot of things under the term "mechanics" when it comes to games, not just fiddling with nobs and finding secret builds that turn you into a 3.5 paladin. There's also the matter of how fights play out, are you clicking a target and waiting for it to die? Are you frantically keeping your allies up with rolling heal-over-time spells because they think you alone can keep up the whole damn raid on an aoe boss? Are you hiding in the bushes and waiting for someone to slip up and reveal themselves via firing their gun? Are you skirmishing in a town, playing peek-a-boo and timing your run according to when that heavy fires? Are you camping in the intel room, setting up nasty little traps with the demo and laughing your ass off even when they fail?
Things that turn me off of a game:
Stale cliches and schizoid story archs. So, the oh-so-pretty-elf shows up, goes through a bland forest area, gets quests from the local not-as-pretty-her-or-himself-I-can't-really-tell kills x amount of [forest animal] for the quests, collects x amount of [item], turns in the quests, receives xp, washes the cu-COUGH- washes, rinses, repeats.
Gritty-soldier-man[boulder sized shoulder pads and twenty-four-pack abs optional] guns down bland enemies in a lushly detailed setting that nobody cares about, collects money and weapons, shoots his lo-COUGH-may or may not have a jump button.
Pick from one of like 50 faces that all look either the same or grotesquely different, and all look douchey as fuck, pick from like 5 colors, shoot some folks who all picked the same options you did, maybe get the one actually good weapon and get kicked from the server for using it.
So anyway, you've gotta save the elf queen from the demon that's taken over this ancient castle! BUT WAIT, first you've gotta go get me some feathers from the ass end of three zones ago so I can make an irrelevant item I'm going to treat as the macguffin until it's revealed I'm actually the demon and this palace was built just one month ago as a boarding school for elves with skin deformities and the queen is actually a dude in drag.
Dunk ass communities. This is what made me leave WoW for real, the people playing it just got worse and worse as time went on. Granted, I may just be getting crotchety really fast, but whatever. When you log on, and your chat box is immediately filled with an ongoing flame war over which shape of waffle is better [square, by the way] and whoever disagrees with the single-person majority [there always like five of them] is bad at the very game they claim to be playing, it's time to find somewhere else to go. And then you find out everywhere that isn't the main city is deserted. And then you get found. By the rogue.
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Post by Andrew on Apr 26, 2013 13:37:03 GMT -6
Dunk ass communities. This is what made me leave WoW for real, the people playing it just got worse and worse as time went on. Granted, I may just be getting crotchety really fast, but whatever. When you log on, and your chat box is immediately filled with an ongoing flame war over which shape of waffle is better [square, by the way] and whoever disagrees with the single-person majority [there always like five of them] is bad at the very game they claim to be playing, it's time to find somewhere else to go. And then you find out everywhere that isn't the main city is deserted. And then you get found. By the rogue. Just because I am amused and feel the need to comment on this bit.. WoW's community is no different than any other MMO community I've ever encountered. The same immature bullshit pops up in all sorts of other games. I've played RO, TERA, TOR, Rift, Scarlet Blade, etc, etc, and all of them have that entourage of douchefucks who troll everyone always just because it gets them off. WoW is no different, except (like Rift) they're paying to get their jibblies off. Also, circular waffles. And with Mists, WoW actually got much better with the 'capital-city-syndrome', just sayin'.. >.>
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KJ
Unfamiliar Face
Magister mundi sum
Posts: 38
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Post by KJ on Apr 26, 2013 13:55:48 GMT -6
Eh, I might try it again eventually, but you bring up a good point.
Except Rift.
In Rift, the fight was not about food, favorite color, who was or was not a ninja, the chat was nothing but complaints about WoW.
I say "was" because I am not going back to Rift. It was a cool idea, and I really liked it until the multiplayer element kicked in for anything beyond the rift gimmick. Don't get me wrong, open world raids and events like that are awesome, and Rift's rifts were really fricken cool, but they were the only part of the game I liked having other players around for.
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Post by Andrew on Apr 26, 2013 18:28:21 GMT -6
I completely agree. The Rifts were really the only good co-op feature that Rift had.
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Post by Crystalline on Apr 27, 2013 1:30:50 GMT -6
Okay, Para told me to do this so here I am.
By the way you two. It's a freaken Waffle. As long as it is good you could make it a cylinder and I would be good, or a pyramid, that would be cool.
To start out I have played a few MMOs but the main one has been WoW. I have not found one to suck me in like WoW had though it could be I am a big fan of Warcraft even from the first Warcraft game, which you had to start up from the DOS. But I guess I will start with things I would like to see in MMOs.
Customization If an MMO could take the customization of a character like the way the Elder Scrolls have done I would be happy. Also having a color bar or grid for the hair would be good. Changing body type, weight, height, and the age look of the skin would be a nice add on but that I could live more without. Beyond that it comes to the gear. WoW has recently fixed this with the Transmog that is offered. You can take old gear and transmog that gear over the currently good gear to get the look of the old. People have put together sets and if you have your favorite set you can keep that look if you pay gold. There are times that having just a color change in the armor is not a bad thing, especially when you are trying to put a set together that you like the design but need a certain color.
Story Holy cow is this a big one for me. I enjoy a good story in a game and sometimes that is exactly why I play them. I like both Linear and Open World concepts. In all honesty I want to know why heroes (us) are needed and why they are needed now instead of, lets say, before whatever we are needed for happened. What caused the need to arise; was it the end of the world, a brutal war, a need for a race/faction to survive, or just because that person right there stole your toast? I want to know that and then the journey your person takes from a newbie to oh god awesome person.
Stats This has been an on-again-off-again subject for me. There are some games that I would enjoy getting a set amount of points per level to put into your person and level them up that way. Lets say you are warrior type you would put your points in strength, stamina, and then whatever could help you crit (has been called a few different things between games, soooo. Yeah.). You would completely by pass the intellect stat for the warrior but you could also put all three of your points in strength if you wanted too. Then on the other hand I enjoy as you level you automatically get those points depending on your class and your points are given to you as a talent or to pick/upgrade skills. WoW does this with the talents, and then on the flip side, Scarlet Blade does the pick skills and then put more points into that skill to upgrade it and make it better.
Fighting Okay for this there are a few different types depending on how the game is set up. WoW has the set up of a click a mob and then either click or hot key your abilities for the fight and then you can move around. You can get out of some things like a ground AOE that has an area limit or an AOE that the boss lets out that damages people within a certain amount of yards from him. This can be fun but at the same time can be mind numbing. Also you can get people who tunnel vision on their cool downs and not pay attention to the fight. Also if someone attacks you it doesn't matter if you try to dodge that mage's frostbolt it will arc towards you if it is going to hit, no moving your character to dodge the attack. Terra on the other hand gives you the ability to dodge range attacks if you move out of the way of that magic spell shooting towards your face. You can still use your abilities but this makes the player more involved and can give them better control of the damage they receive. Both are enjoyable.
Crafting When I'm not out fighting everything I see I enjoy doing some crafting stuff. Now I don't know much about other games as I never got into them to know in depth about them so WoW is what i'll be basing most of this off. I do know a little about TOR but I had only played it in Beta and not long enough as I was playing off of Para's computer. I enjoy crafting and the special items or abilities you can gain from them. In WoW I have one of every crafting class to try them all. Of course there are some that are better than others, easier to level, or the ones to make a lot of gold off of but it's a good side thing to do when you just happen to be tired of the killing. From what I've seen Scarlet Blade does not offer crafting but for that game it's not really missed, or it hasn't from my point of view. Maybe when I get higher in level and more game time under my belt this may change but right now it's good. TOR, in the beta, had a few really strong crafting and weak ones that no one went after. I believe they balanced this, but again I didn't play much after Beta and I'll explain more on why later.
Side Objectives Some games lacked this and for WoW they lacked it a lot. They have tried to fix this with Mists but it just hasn't been enough yet. There are the normal things like fishing and cooking in WoW and with Mists they added a farm you can do and they also added Pet battles which is just like Pokemon (Gotta catch 'em all!). Before that it was only Achievements but even then some of them can take days to complete, and lets face it, most people want the achievement now and don't want to wait for it. Not only that the achievement system does nothing but show off an e-peen of a player. You do randomly get pets, mounts, titles, or an item but most of the time it's nothing but a little "ding" to your list. Something more to do on the side would be nice, but it's hard to please everyone so what WoW has done has been good.
PVP I will say this now. I am not big into PVP. I do it from time to time but I am also a person who rages, yells, pouts (?), and gets annoyed in PvP. Para will attest to this and hates it when I do PvP. I do get some enjoyment out of it even if it makes me mad because that is just part of the game. I do play on a PvE realm so I chose when I want to PvP and in a way, how it is done. I believe WoW has done a good job at this and they are still trying new things when it comes to PvP. They give us battlegrounds, arenas, and certain areas where you can flag yourself for world PvP objectives. But then there are a few areas where it is considered neutral towns, or what they call sanctuaries, where PvP is not allowed and guards will attack you on site if you attack another player. Also the capitals are safe areas for that faction and the first beginning area of each race. That being said, I enjoy PvP on my terms and then the battlegrounds because most of them are different from each other in some ways.
Those are some things I like and some quirks that I don't like now onto the things I dislike.
Pay to Win In all honesty depending on the quality of the game I have no qualms for paying a sub to play. If a game can pull me in then yes I'll pay you to play, but if you make a Free-To-Play (FTP) and make the person pay you to beat the other gamers, then I have a problem. TOR became this problem for me. Honesty the game didn't suck me in like some others have but when I heard it became FTP I decided to give it another shot and see if I could get back into playing it. Well I did but they had tiers within the game. You had FTP tier, one for people who had paid but are now FTP, and subs. I'm sure there was another in there but I don't remember. Well the FTP had only 2 character slots open, three races per faction out of like six, you got no rest (double XP for when you logged out), and some quest rewards were locked to you until you subed, no bank access, reduced XP gain, and there are a few others but that's the jest of it. I could handle the first three but when you then start denying the ability to get QUEST rewards that went a little above what I liked. When I found that out I actually stopped playing and got rid of the game again. I actually will refuse to go back to the game because of that. If you want to restrict your FTP players that much you might as well keep the sub and lower the monthly price or something. Scarlet Blade is a game that is FTP and has really no big restrictions. You can buy items from a store but it is mostly cosmetics or awesome looking bikes.
Questing Okay this section could have been either category but I have enough in the like section. I want an MMO to have the ability to solo the quests. WoW actually does a good job and you can pretty much play solo all the way to cap level. If you want a group setting you can queue for a dungeon and run that with a group of five. There are also some quests out in the world, which can be skip-able, that are labeled group quests. A few of these appeared in the Wrath expansion but I haven't seen them much since as they were not as big of a hit as Blizzard wanted them to be. On the flip side you can do all of these solo quests with a group and nothing big happens. You get a slight cut in XP when you kill mobs because it is split among the group but that's about it. So it becomes your choice, solo or group. I played a little of FFXI and didn't get very far because of the fact that you -HAD- to have a group to quest after like level five, so just like TOR it didn't get played for very long and I didn't get to experience much of the game. It had seemed fun but that one aspect shut me down from the game.
Storage Holy shit Para will freak out about this and can give you page long rants about not enough storage. Honestly I half agree with him. Vanity items are big in WoW and Para has a collection problem with them, and sometimes so do I (depending on the item). WoW has tried to help with this by opening Void storage up to players where they can store items but for big collection freaks, like Para, it is not enough. They offer bigger bags, but again not enough. There are just to many items to collect in the game to be able to store it all and that can make collection players very sad (Para will be giving the sad face now). I am only thinking of vanity items though. There are a TON of people who collect armor because you need to have that armor to transmog in WoW. You can't have owned that piece of armor at one time, sold it, and still use it to transform your armor. No, you have to keep that item on you to be able to transmog over any gear you upgrade. I'll give WoW credit for trying to fix this problem but they are still not at the point to make the players happy.
Okay after this novel I think that's about it. I'm sure there is more but I'm slightly tired of writing this down. So be happy Para I did what you asked me to do. *Glares at Para.*
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